[charlesE]

I haven't tried it so I'm not sure if it works, but if you're using Ubuntu you could try this:
HOWTO Compile MPD With AAC/M4A Support on Ubuntu - James Andres's Tips & How-To's

 

[pokipoki]

Use Jack with aqualung.

Aqualung is similar, if not better than foobar, especially when used with TAP plugins. LADSPA plugins are supported too. I am totally impressed with their features, playback APE, FLAC, WavPack etc.

http://aqualung.factorial.hu/home.html
Aqualung Music Player - Screenshots
TAP-plugins Equalizer/BW
TAP-plugins TubeWarmth

 

[Mazz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ech0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can use the following to find what device you need to use: $aplay -l This will show you what devices you have available. You're looking for the one with IEC958 in the line. FWIW, I think it's hw:0,1 or you will probably use plughw:0,1.

You can do better than that - and not have to worry about specifying indexes in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base by using the NAME of the output device instead of the number.

On my MythTV box where I run Amarok and MPD to drive my integrated amp + speakers I have a Chaintech AV-710, on-board Intel HDA (not actually used), two TV capture cards, and I sometimes plug in a USB headphone DAC/amp. I use ALSA and without the USB DAC "aplay -l" currently shows (with card names bolded by me):

card 0: AV710 [Chaintech AV-710], device 0: ICE1724 [ICE1724]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: AV710 [Chaintech AV-710], device 1: IEC1724 IEC958 [IEC1724 IEC958]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Sometimes during boot the indexes will be swapped around and the HDA Intel will become card 0. I've also had the capture cards taking up slots 0 and 1 at times further changing the index assigned to the AV-710. I don't care because my ALSA specifications are "plughw:AV710,1" rather than "plughw:0,1". (I use plughw: instead of hw: at times because it does sample bit length conversions - IIRC my card only accepts 32-bit at most sampling rates.)

 

[LnxPrgr3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by n4k33n /img/forum/go_quote.gif Actually there IS a program like ASIO in Linux. Its called Jack. It brings the latency down to ASIO levels. I highly advise you get it working.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pokipoki /img/forum/go_quote.gif Use Jack with aqualung.

Jack just goes through ALSA, which is fully capable of low-latency playback... not that it matters in the slightest if you're just using it to play music

 

[serpico]

I'm new to linux and just installed Ubuntu along with the updates. I saw a digg story on Banshee. Is that recommended? I was to install it until I found this thread.

 

[insyte]

I couldn't leave my favorite apps when I shifted to linux, so before I had a dual boot setup in the early days of wine.

But now, under ubuntu and wine ....

I use foobar as my default player and format converter (yes lame.exe, flac.exe and oggenc all works under wine)

As for my CD ripper, well EAC also works perfectly under wine, even the accuraterip feature and cddb query, and most importantly secure mode with C2 correction

 

[Ech0]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mazz /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can do better than that - and not have to worry about specifying indexes in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base by using the NAME of the output device instead of the number. On my MythTV box where I run Amarok and MPD to drive my integrated amp + speakers I have a Chaintech AV-710, on-board Intel HDA (not actually used), two TV capture cards, and I sometimes plug in a USB headphone DAC/amp. I use ALSA and without the USB DAC "aplay -l" currently shows (with card names bolded by me): card 0: AV710 [Chaintech AV-710], device 0: ICE1724 [ICE1724] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: AV710 [Chaintech AV-710], device 1: IEC1724 IEC958 [IEC1724 IEC958] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0​ ​

​

​

What is "better" can always be debateable as there almost always is more than one way to do things. For instance, I would disable the Intel Soundcard you're not using in bios and you won't have it getting in your way. It's what I've done and I've not had to specify indicies as was suggested you have to do.

 

[Mazz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ech0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif What is "better" can always be debateable as there almost always is more than one way to do things. For instance, I would disable the Intel Soundcard you're not using in bios and you won't have it getting in your way. It's what I've done and I've not had to specify indicies as was suggested you have to do.

Just disabling the other sound cards won't stop you having to specify indices unless you're relying on the pre-specified ALSA default output device - which is itself specified in terms of index 0.

If you at a later time plug in a USB DAC, or add a TV capture card that also has a playback capability, or have a BIOS update that automatically re-enables the onboard sound card you'll suddenly get another output device which may or may not take over as the default, and if present at boot time may or may not be assigned index 0 (and yes, this is true sometimes EVEN IF you specify indexes for different cards in your ALSA config - that code isn't 100% bulletproof).

If you don't want to find that all sound output has suddenly been sent somewhere you didn't intend you'll need to mess with your ALSA config - or reboot and hope that the original sound card grabs index 0.

And if you want to specifically direct sound to the new device or to the existing sound device you'll need a way to specify which one you mean. You'll either need to use indices or names. The names are stable identifiers; the indices are not.

But if you're entirely sure you'll only ever have one playback device in your system you can rely on the ALSA default, but then you don't and won't have the problem we're talking about in the first place so you don't need to care

 

[Ech0]

I see where you're coming from. I went back and read this post, in part, to figure out exactly what you were saying. You knew where I was coming from though, I've never had a need for more than one device. Although, I still think disabling an onboard device that you know you're not going to use is a sane idea.

OT, I see you run amarok instead of MythMusic on your Myth box. To date I've not gotten away from MythMusic. Although I have added Amarok as one of my buttons in the media menu. I'm not sure if I'll use it or not. Depends on how well Amarok does w/a IR remote device and it's appearance full screen. I would prefer to find something other than MythMusic though. Do you use Amarok w/a remote or other? I may get motivated and play with this a bit this weekend.

 

[Zanth]

Are there any high-end (as in studio-grade) music packages? I know of the regular stuff (Amarok, Foobar via Wine, XMMS, Exile, Banshee, etc etc) but I would really like to know if there is some solid kit (sound card + software) for music editing and playback as there is for video editing (linux is used all over Hollywood).

Linux NEEDS a Foobar/EAC port.

 

[Ech0]

AFAIK, Rubyripper is the closest thing to EAC in Linux. It does a good job, but, I still use EAC via wine.

 

[Mazz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ech0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Although, I still think disabling an onboard device that you know you're not going to use is a sane idea.

It certainly is, but it hasn't been high enough priority for me given that it's no longer hurting anything...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ech0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif OT, I see you run amarok instead of MythMusic on your Myth box. To date I've not gotten away from MythMusic.

I've never managed to get the hang of MythMusic, but the idea of using my main remote as the sole interface to the music player is nice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ech0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Although I have added Amarok as one of my buttons in the media menu. I'm not sure if I'll use it or not. Depends on how well Amarok does w/a IR remote device and it's appearance full screen. [...] Do you use Amarok w/a remote or other? I may get motivated and play with this a bit this weekend.

I've added an "amarok" mode to my .lircrc config file so that when I press one of my remote buttons it brings up amarok and switches LIRC to controlling amarok instead of MythTV. In that LIRC mode one of the remote buttons kills amarok and reverts LIRC to controlling MythTV. This seems to work better than putting amarok into one of the MythTV menus.

I have a mouse plugged in to my MythTV box that I use for browsing my collection or filesystem and setting up playlists. Once that's done I use LIRC bindings that let me pause/play/stop/skip back/skip forwards/next track/previous track/volume control and maybe a couple of others from my remote control.

You should also be able to make LIRC emulate a mouse but I haven't bothered yet as I find a real mouse more useful - especially with amarok that doesn't seem to have a full set of commands that would allow you to do everything you can do with the mouse in all of the UI's tabs.

I also us mpd with mpd clients installed on a couple of different laptops which is useful when you want to control the music without needing to sit in front of the TV.

 

[cerbie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth /img/forum/go_quote.gif Linux NEEDS a Foobar/EAC port.

EAC may be an issue, but Foobar2000 works fine, without modification. I haven't yet had the time to try out EAC since WINE became API complete.

 

[Ech0]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mazz I've never managed to get the hang of MythMusic, but the idea of using my main remote as the sole interface to the music player is nice.

It's nice to use MythMusic w/a remote, but, I think it is lacking compared to a feature rich Amarok. That's why I was curious to hear how you did things. May get motivated today and play with it a bit.

 

[LnxPrgr3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cerbie /img/forum/go_quote.gif EAC may be an issue, but Foobar2000 works fine, without modification. I haven't yet had the time to try out EAC since WINE became API complete.

EAC does work in Wine. Outdated instructions for Gentoo are available at http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-386370.html. It seems now you can skip the part about making yourself owner of the CD device, so long as you have read permission on it.

I'm not sure how much of a point there is though. I have been experimenting with my most damaged CDs, and neither EAC nor cdparanoia were capable of giving me perfect results. cdparanoia, however, gave me good results much faster, and on less damaged tracks on the same CD, it gave me bit identical results to EAC.

cdparanoia, incidentally, is behind pretty much every ripping solution for Linux, so you should be able to use whatever's easiest and get the same results, minus offset correction -- the cdparanoia tools support this now, but I don't know how many programs expose this feature.